1

He brought with him a number of his compositions, which he desired to associate in a Miscellany with some of Pope's, and the two occupied themselves at Twickenham in forming the selection. Among Pope's papers was a satire called Dulness, written against those who had attacked him in a number of "libels" which he had collected and bound. He had formerly put this aside on Swift's own recommendation, and he now made a show of burning it, but the Dean snatched it from the fire, and urged him to complete it. Pope consented, and polished the satire into the first draft of The Dunciad. This, however, he did not at once publish, conceiving that the public would require a poem of such virulent personality to be justified by provocation more recent than the obsolete libels he had so carefully preserved. To attain his end he published in 1728 the Bathos, a fragment of the Scriblerus scheme, concerted as far back as 1713, with Swift and Arbuthnot, inserting in the general ironic treatise a chapter full of satiric allusions to his old enemies under the disguise of different animals, each of them being indicated by initials. The device was perfectly successful. The Dunces rushed out to retaliate, and the journals swarmed with fresh libels against the poet, who was thus enabled to appear before the world on 28th May 1728 as the defender of his own injured fame.

Even under such conditions, however, Pope proceeded with a caution amounting to timidity. The Dunciad was first published without either names or explanatory notes, and it was only after he had satisfied himself that the curiosity of the reading public was stronger than their reprobation that he ventured, in 1729, to issue the large edition containing the names of the victims, the Prolegomena, the notes of Scriblerus, etc. He further guarded himself against prosecution for libel by assigning the property in the poem to three peers of distinction, whom he thought the Dunces would be unlikely to attack. When it appeared safe to do so, the satire was transferred by these noblemen to the publisher, Gilliver.

The effect of The Dunciad was to annihilate for the

time the hack-writers of Grub Street, who, if their names were mentioned in it, could no longer obtain employment from the booksellers. But the war against Pope was still carried on by the more influential and fashionable of his enemies, particularly Lord Hervey and Lady M. W. Montagu, and it therefore became an object of prime importance to him, now that he had crushed what he maintained to be a public evil, to proclaim the loftiness and purity of his motives. Out of The Dunciad accordingly sprang the series of autobiographical poems beginning with the Imitations of Horace, comprising the Versifications of Donne, and closing with the Epistle to Arbuthnot. The first of these (the Imitation of Horace Satires, Book ii. 1) was written at the suggestion of Bolingbroke in 1732, when Pope was recovering from an attack of illness occasioned by his grief at the recent death of Gay; the object of the Imitation was to show first that Pope's satire was employed in the cause of Virtue, and next that with him it was a weapon of self-defence. By its publication the bitterness of the conflict between the poet and his enemies was increased, while his sense of the greatness of his own calling, as the satiric champion of Virtue, was proportionately exalted. It is impossible to read his professions in the Epistle to Arbuthnot, written in 1735, without recognising in the midst of self-deception the glow of enthusiasm :

Not Fortune's worshipper, nor Fashion's fool,
Not Lucre's madman, not Ambition's tool,
Not proud, nor servile; be one poet's praise
That, if he pleased, he pleased by manly ways;
That flattery, e'en to kings, he held a shame,
And thought a lie in verse and prose the same;
That not in Fancy's maze he wandered long,
But stooped to Truth, and moralised his song ;
That not for Fame, but Virtue's better end,
He stood the furious foe, the timid friend,
The damning critic, half-approving wit,
The coxcomb hit, or fearing to be hit;
Laughed at the loss of friends he never had,
The dull, the proud, the wicked, and the mad ;
The distant threats of vengeance on his head;
The blow unfelt, the tear he never shed;

VOL. V

N

The tale revived, the lie so oft o'erthrown,
The imputed trash, the dulness not his own ;
The morals blackened when the writings 'scape,
The libelled person, and the pictured shape;
Abuse on all he loved, or loved him, spread;
A friend in exile, or a parent dead ;
The whisper that, to greatness still too near,
Perhaps yet vibrates on his Sovereign's ear—
Welcome for thee, fair Virtue! all the past:

For thee, fair Virtue, welcome e'en the last!

Closely connected with Pope's autobiographical compositions, yet essentially different in character, were his Moral Essays or Ethical Epistles, the political satires entitled Seventeen Hundred and Thirty-Eight and 1740, and the fourth book of The Dunciad. The Moral Essays, originally called Ethical Epistles, were, as their name shows, didactic poems. They were intended to be integral parts of the scheme of the Essay on Man, of which I shall have to speak in another chapter; but they were full of modern illustrations, which gave them also a satiric character. The first of them to be published (30th December 1731) was that now printed as the fourth. It appeared with the title On Taste, and was evidently didactic in intention. The general theme, however, was illustrated by particular instances, and, in the character of Timon, certain touches were probably suggested by Canons, the house of John Bridges, Duke of Chandos ; hence, as the intense personality of The Dunciad had led the public to believe that everything proceeding from Pope's pen was meant to reflect upon individuals, it was easy for the Dunces to spread the rumour that the entire essay was meant for a satire on the duke. Pope was much disturbed by these reports, and in consequence kept back the publication of the Epistle to Bathurst, now known as the Third Moral Essay, On the Use of Riches, for a full year after it was written. He allowed it to appear at last in January 1733, with many apprehensions,' which proved to be quite groundless; for, though it was full of bitter satire on Walpole and his supporters among

1 Letter to Caryll of 14th December 1732.

1

the moneyed interest, most of the persons and things attacked were odious to the public. This essay distinctly raised the poet's reputation, and encouraged him to publish the Epistle to Cobham, On the Characters of Men-now the First Moral Essay-which appeared in February 1733. It has more systematic philosophy in it than any of the others, and less particular satire, being certainly, on the whole, the feeblest of the series. The characters it contains were, for the most part, obviously generalisations; and when, in 1735, Pope published the companion Epistle to Martha Blount, On the Characters of Women, he took the precaution to declare on his honour “that no one character is drawn from the life" in it. The public, always on the look-out for personality, were proportionately disappointed, and neglected the satire. Piqued by their indifference, Pope, in the octavo edition of the Epistle, inserted a note

to v. 102 :-

Between this and the former lines, and also in some following parts, a want of connection may be perceived, occasioned by the omission of certain examples and illustrations of the maxims laid down, which may put the reader in mind of what the author has said in his Imitation of Horace :—

Publish the present age, but when the text

Is vice too high, reserve it for the next.

Pope had written to Swift on the 16th of February 1733-"Your lady friend [Martha Blount] is semper eadem, and I have written an Epistle to her on that qualification in a female character; which is thought by my chief critic in your absence [Bolingbroke] to be my chef-d'œuvre; but it cannot be printed perfectly in an age so sore of satire, and so willing to misapply characters." And accordingly, when the essay On the Characters of Women first appeared, it was without the characters of Chloe, Philomede, and Atossa.

Of the same class with the Moral Essays is The New Dunciad, published in 1742; but it contains touches that connect it with Pope's political satires, which were in themselves inspired by a different range of motives.

In his early days, while he was climbing to a position of independence, the poet had studiously abstained from connecting himself with any political party-a matter of no great difficulty, as he was debarred by his religion from taking any direct part in political action. At a later period, in his autobiographical poems, he loved to represent this detachment from party as the effect of philosophy :

In moderation placing all my glory,

While Tories call me Whig, and Whigs a Tory.1

Yet at the time when he wrote these words he was an active supporter of the Parliamentary Opposition. That Opposition had been formed by the genius of Bolingbroke, who, though he owed his amnesty to Walpole, hated the Minister because he had not restored him to his political privileges. He carried carried on his intrigues against the Government mainly in the press, his chief organ being The Craftsman, founded by him in December 1726. Under the banner raised by Bolingbroke were united the Jacobites, the Hanoverian Tories, and the discontented Whigs, who were jealous of Walpole's practical monopoly of power. For a short time in 1733 this motley Opposition seemed on the point of succeeding, and inflicted on Walpole in that year a serious defeat over his Excise Bill. But when Bolingbroke tried to push home his advantage in a motion by Sir William Wyndham to repeal the Septennial Act, the weakness of his own following and the strength of Walpole's became apparent; and, recognising his failure, he abandoned politics, and in 1735 retired to France.

In Bolingbroke's long political campaign Pope found something thoroughly congenial to his temper. It roused, in the first place, his personal sympathies. Not that he had any rancour against Walpole, whom in private company he liked, and to whom he was under some obligation; but he detested the moneyed interest, who were at once the chief supporters of the Minister and the

1 Imitation of Horace Satires, ii. 1. 67-68.